Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday October 09, 2012 @04:38PM
from the ok-i-guess dept.

Several readers sent word that KDE has published a manifesto. According to its official announcement, the KDE community's growth over the past 15 years has "created a need for clarity about what pulls us together as a community." It continues, "The KDE Manifesto is not intended to change the organization or the way it works. Its aim is only to describe how the KDE Community sees itself. What binds us together are certain values and their practical implications, without regard for who a person is or what background and skills they bring." The manifesto opens boldly, saying, "We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software." It comes along with more detailed descriptions of the benefits and principles of a KDE project.

Yep. If you have to state it, it means that the people within the group don't know it, that it's reached a state where management of it is required, and where people outside the group would be expected not to know the motivation for the project. Otherwise you wouldn't need to state it.

It's nothing more than a company mission statement. Who cares about a company mission statement from, say, Google, or Microsoft, or your local bakery, or any company of any scale whatsoever apart from the people who write i

It's nothing more than a company mission statement. Who cares about a company mission statement from, say, Google, or Microsoft, or your local bakery, or any company of any scale whatsoever apart from the people who write it? No-one.

While this is most likely true, I would say that the company's mission statement certainly still does have an impact on the customer through it's implementation.

I think that is true, no-one cares. NO ONE! If you're a tie, your job is (amongst many other things of course) making sure the people underneath you can rattle out the mission statement at your command. If you are working for a company and you earn a penny or two above minimum wage, you do what you are requested. That is:"Do your job and memorise the mission statement" so that if a tie is coming to you asking about it you are able to drone-it-up". You keep the tie happy, who in turn keeps the boss happy, yo

It's like those people that waste their time on documentation. How much code could they write instead of describing the APIs or providing tutorials? And don't get me started on those profligate programmers that use multi-character variable names...

Nothing forms the foundation of a bright future quite like issuing a manifesto.

Considering how much flack Gnome has gotten for not having any discernible goals or performance metrics, a manifesto seems like a reasonable place to start if you want to avoid Headless Chicken Syndrome.

Considering how much flack Gnome has gotten for not having any discernible goals

Really? I thought the goal of Gnome was to remove features and break shit.

or performance metrics,

Or, you know, the number of features removed or broken during the previous development cycle. A good surrogate metric is tha amount of swearing which goes on in the forum in threads relating to missing features.

I would like to counter that point with a reference to the Debian Manifesto [debian.org]. It was published in 1994, and Debian, in addition to becoming one of the most popular distributions by itself, came to form the basis behind products like Ubuntu, Mint, Nokia Maemo, Knoppix and Mepis. So for them it seems to have worked.

I would like to counter that point with a reference to the Debian Manifesto. It was published in 1994, and Debian, in addition to becoming one of the most popular distributions by itself, came to form the basis behind products like Ubuntu, Mint, Nokia Maemo, Knoppix and Mepis. So for them it seems to have worked.

Except the Debian Manifesto is pretty to the point about WHAT they want to build, WHY and HOW. The KDE manifesto is more a fluffy value statement that pretty much wraps being a community-driven open source project in pretty words. It reminds me of certain corporate value statements, like saying we have 7 values and they are honesty, boldness, trust, freedom, team spirit, modesty and fun. Great, but do you have any fogging idea where they're going with that? Or even what line of business they're in? Well oka

Nothing forms the foundation of a bright future quite like issuing a manifesto.

It must also be rambling, or else it's not a true manifesto because all true manifestos are always rambling and go on rambling for many pages because that is what true manifestos do, they ramble until the manifesto is true because rambling is what they do.

Open Governance to ensure engagement in our leadership and decision processes;

We have ensured that this is the most open governance possible. Why, as we speak, KDE death squads are being dispatched to move door to door to force you into a leadership and/or decision process for KDE. Should you fail or should said squads find Gnome in your household... well, let's just concentrate on the positives of the Manifesto. We here at KDE put the "FEST" in "Manifesto!"

Free Software to ensure the result of our work is available to all people;

We have recently employed Liam Neeson and a team of investigators working around the clock to tie names and individuals to credit cards and paypal accounts after turning over all our donation transactions to them. If you do not accept our software as free, you will be paid a visit by Liam Neeson who has, shall we say, developed a particularly forceful skill set in working at our returns department! Don't thank us, thank you for using KDE -- please we cannot emphasize this enough: it will be free or there will be blood.

Inclusivity to ensure that people of all origins are welcome to join us and participate;

In an effort to include everyone, we have actually started up cloning chambers with the DNA of Neanderthals. No origins, past or present, will be left un-KDE'd in our quest to excel in inclusivity past those dirty gnome users.

Innovation to ensure that new ideas constantly emerge to better serve people;

Ah yes, our innovation measures have become quite extreme. So extreme that you can feel them in the pit of your stomach. Not literally, of course -- the literal pit of innovation is behind our headquarters where we've trapped the world's leading scientists and patent lawyers while we spray them with a hose if they don't meet our patent quotas to out-innovate the gnome team!

Common Ownership to ensure that we stay united;

This one is simple! Any forks will be auspiciously repressed! Not repressed like emotional feelings but instead like tanks in Tienanmen Square. Of course, this is open source, you're free to fork whenever you want and we're free to ensure that everyone stays united. It's open source + united people = united open source people!

End-User Focus to ensure our work is useful to all people.

Is your Klan rally missing that flame? Is your Neo-Nazi newsletter not so neo? Is your jihad turning out to be a junker? Well, submit a feature request to KDE to ensure you can meet all of your needs with our software. We don't discriminate -- that is unless you want us to! *wink* *wink*

In all seriousness though, I know it doesn't mean this but am I the only person that imagines someone with crazy eyes smiling uncontrollably at you when you hear the word 'manifesto'?

The book featured on KDE's website calls it 'The KDE Developer's Beginner's Guide'. Doesn't sound anything like the manifestos of Kazynski, Marx or anyone else. Although it would have been better had this been a Qt manifesto, covering KDE, Razor-qt and all other Qt based apps.

Calling something that could fit on a business card without much squeezing a "manifesto" feels like stretching it to me... but I guess "mission statement" would sound too corporate. I was expecting something more on the scale of the GNU Manifesto.